Patrick Soderlund, head of the EA Games label, has revealed that the reason the Frostbite 2.0 engine is so demanding on current-gen hardware is because it was designed for use with next-generation consoles.

When asked by Gamasutra if the team purposely overshot average PC specs with Frostbite 2, he replied, “Yeah, I’ll be honest with you — Frostbite 2 was built for the next generation. That’s how we started it. We had that in mind and we said, ‘We’re going to have to build something that can scale.’”

“It doesn’t mean that what you see in Battlefield 3 is the end state. That’s the beginning; that’s where we start and then we go forward,” he added. “But we have a tech base that makes me feel really confident in how we’re positioned for what’s going to come in the future.”

Soderlund also mentioned that Medal of Honor: Warfighter was originally being developed using the Unreal Engine 3 before the switch was made to Frostbite, “It was basically a desire from that team, when they saw the results of Battlefield, and they saw the results of what that engine could do at the time. I’m not saying [Epic has] a bad engine — I’m just saying comparing the two at the time it was like, ‘Okay, we can do more of what we want with the Battlefield/Frostbite engine.’”

Matthew Bennett finally got his big break with EGM three years ago, following years of volunteer work for various sites. An ability to go many hours without sleep and a quick wit make him ideal for his role as associate editor at EGMNOW.com. He often thinks back to the days when the very idea of this career seemed like nothing but an impossible dream. Follow him on Twitter @mattyjb89. Meet the rest of the crew.